


In the Space Behind the Curtain

by Shalkalaka



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crackfic?, Extended Whoniverse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shalkalaka/pseuds/Shalkalaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mycroft Holmes for once finds himself outmaneuvered, outranked, and whisked off to a strange location.  When the whisk-er is one Irving Braxiatel, he can't bring himself to mind.</p><p>Or: Mycroft finds another governmental mastermind with an impossible little brother.  His counterpart just so happens to be a time-traveling alien art collector who owns his own planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Space Behind the Curtain

Six minutes before the bomb was set to explode, the strangest art thief that Mycroft Holmes had ever seen blinked into existence on the other end of the security camera’s feed. In his impeccable suit and frankly appalling bowler hat, the man looked more like a curator than someone in the middle of a heist, but as Mycroft watched, he pulled a little wand from his pocket, waved it at the security beams, and calmly began to remove a portrait from the wall.

“Pause the count,” Mycroft ordered into his lapel. “Two men with me to room 20. It seems we have a guest.”

By the time they arrived, the intruder had taken apart the frame and was delicately sliding the rolled-up portrait into a protective tube, looking utterly unperturbed at the sound of their footsteps. He took in Mycroft and the armed guards waiting in the doorway at a glance, capped off the tube, and tipped his hat.

“Good evening,” he smiled graciously across the dim gallery.

“George Grote,” Mycroft observed, walking to the room’s central bench in a few easy strides. “Not an unattractive likeness, but hardly the most valuable piece in the collection for a thief to be targeting.”

“Not a thief, but a preservationist, as I like to think of myself. And I daresay that, even to your eyes, it’s one of the most valuable works remaining in the building. Unless, that is, I’m wrong in believing that at least half of these are replicas, and all,” the intruder spread his arms, “are facing imminent destruction.”

Expensively tailored clothing, cultured intonation, access to highly classified information, a personal bearing that bespoke comfort wielding power, and yet a face that triggered no recognition in Mycroft’s memory – an unpleasantly worrying combination. Mycroft felt his terse little smile freezing on his face. “That information would not be incorrect. May I ask where you got it?”

“I take it you’ve delayed the bombs?”

“For the moment, yes.”

“Then I am, for the moment, at your disposal, Mr. Holmes. A question for a question?”

Mycroft gripped his umbrella in surprise. “I have two men with guns, and you would dictate terms?”

“I have ready answers, and you would work for them?” the stranger echoed.

“Then I will start. Of all the remaining works in this building, you choose to make off with a rather minor radical historian. Why George Grote? I assume there’s more to it than some personal interest in Greece.”

“Ah, George,” the thief sighed, leaning delicately on the tube to mirror the angle of Mycroft’s umbrella. “I hesitate to reveal too much, but suffice it to say that, some years hence, a certain set of papers will be found behind a certain panel in a certain government building, after which point he will no longer be considered so minor.”

“How do you know this?’

“One question at a time, Mr. Holmes!”

“That was a half-answer, Sir. Surely it merits another.”

“Then another half-answer it will be,” he smirked. “The same way I knew what is to happen here tonight, and the same way I suspected I would at last have the pleasure of meeting you. I frequently…tell myself things. I find I am rarely wrong. An unsatisfying response, I am sure, but,” he pointed the tube at Mycroft’s chest, “I can promise there is no leak in your organization.”

“If you say so.”

Settling the portrait over his shoulder, the man began to pace, the pale emergency lights of the empty museum casting alien shadows over his face. “In the small hours of April 19th, 2009, a bomb explodes in the National Portrait Gallery, destroying much of the interior and a portion of Trafalgar Square. No one is killed. Several months later, it will be announced that many of the most valuable works have been miraculously saved and restored. What in fact occurs, of course, is that those works have been removed and replaced with fakes in the days leading up to the blast, which is about to proceed, quite obviously, in the full knowledge of the government. My question is: why?”

An embarrassingly immature part of Mycroft wanted to whine that such a detailed query was practically cheating, but he tamped it down. Cheating was obviously the way of men such as them. “Officially, it will be the work of a group of anti-historicist radicals that call themselves, with a lamentable lack of creativity, New England. They all harbor some sort of apocalyptic fantasy that freeing us from the chains of the past will help us create, as they say, ‘A New England for a New Tomorrow.’ They hope that a strike on the National Gallery will be just the sort of public action that will launch their cause into the popular consciousness and have all the children burning their texts on the sidewalk by next Sunday.”

The thief gaped at him in undisguised horror. “They’re actually aiming to destroy art for the pure sake of destroying art. Destroying artifacts. Oh, if I needed any justification for despising humanity…”

“Utter madmen, all of them, but madmen with surprisingly complex ties to a number of other terrorist groups that we’re in the process of infiltrating. If we stop this attack, all our progress may well be for nothing.”

“And the paintings?”

“Ever since our mole informed us of the plot, we’ve had all the artists we could round up and pay into silence working on our little replicas, which we’ve been replacing as subtly as possible. Decisions had to be made, of course, hence the false Burke, Pitt, and Wilberforce,” he pointed at each with his umbrella, “and the regrettably real Grote. The deeper logistics of the thing are doubtless more involved than you care to hear, but as soon as we’re out of here – and I will make sure we save your dear George – our mole gives the signal, and taxpayers will start contributing funds for a new and improved Gallery. Satisfied?”

“Not entirely,” he grumbled, shooting dissatisfied glances at the doomed works. “I wish I could salvage more, but I will have to trust that you have done what you can.”

“And now that it is my turn: your name? It’s hardly fair that I don’t know what to call you, although I’m sure my people will sort that all out soon enough.”

“Irving Braxiatel. You won’t find anything on me, I’m afraid, but as far as it concerns you, it’s no pseudonym.”

“Irving Braxiatel: timely savior of art.”

“Something like that, yes. And from one minor government official from another, may I suggest that the arts can be an exceedingly rewarding pastime when politics begin to wear?”

Not bad advice, but this was too much. “What government? Who the hell are-”

He was interrupted by a frantic shouting in his earpiece. “Sir! Sir, the countdown’s restarted! We don’t know how, but it’s going fast and you need to get out of there!” 

“Time, Jensen?”

“Two minutes if we’re lucky. Move now and you might get clear!”

He wheeled around rapidly. Stairs: several rooms away and too slow. Windows: none, but for the thick skylight high overhead, and a helicopter team unlikely to arrive in time. Stupid, stupid of him to come in here like this, chasing down a mystery as predictably as his little brother. He could try to run clear of the blast, but perhaps it would be best to calmly select his favorite room in the vicinity and calmly await the end surrounded by the (forged) gazes of Britain’s greats, instead of dying all frantic and sweaty.

That Braxiatel fellow was surprisingly calm, considering his probable impending death, and was fiddling with an incongruously bulky cuff around his left wrist. Mycroft appreciated that he hadn’t yet indulged in any embarrassing hysterics. Pity their meeting had been cut short.

“Sir!” one of the guards in the door shouted, “we have to move!”

“Out, both of you.” He could only slow the young pair. “Thank you for your service, but I’ll fend for -”

“No! Neither of you move!” Braxiatel grabbed Mycroft’s arm. “Mr. Holmes, I assume you want to live?”

“Naturally, but -”

“Then tell your men to stay in that doorway, and hold tight to my wrist.” He offered up that strange cuff which, up close, Mycroft could see was covered in delicate little dials. “I hadn’t thought it would happen this soon, but needs must.”

“What? Are you mad?”

“No more so than you are, I’m sure.”

A challenge, then. Mycroft took a few fast-flowing seconds to stare the thief down, then deliberately placed his hand on the device and nodded.

“Try not to scream. It makes for an awkward arrival,” was all Braxiatel said before Mycroft felt a jolt at the base of his skull, and his eyes exploded into a swirl of psychedelic ultraviolet.

\-------

An unmeasurable period of time later, Mycroft looked down over his shaking chest to where his shoes met a pale amethyst marble floor.

“Time ring,” someone was sighing by his right ear. “Hardly the most elegant way of traveling the space-time vortex, but easily the most discreet. Please forgive me the momentary disorientation.”

None of these words meant anything to Mycroft, so he tried to focus on what he did know. Shoes, umbrella, floor. Voice. The voice of the art “preservationist” Irving Braxiatel. To whom Mycroft was clinging like a startled little girl. Well, then.

Clearing his throat with something hopefully approaching dignity, Mycroft extricated his arm from that of his apparent savior. “I…take it we’re alive and well, then?”

“Far better than that, Mr. Holmes. Please allow me to extend a personal welcome to the Braxiatel Collection on what is generally called, to my ego’s delight, Planet Braxiatel.”

“You have a planet.”

“Ah, yes. A planet housing the finest museum in the cosmos.” He fiddled awkwardly with the prize he had saved from the National Gallery. “I’m sorry, it is hard to be modest at this stage in the introductions.”

A planet, and a museum, and a…time ring? Assuming that Mycroft was still as sane and alive as his senses were telling him, this was all outside the realm of plausible human experience. “Whatever this technology, this ‘space-time vortex’ is, it’s not currently within the capacity of any of the Earth’s governments.”

“Correct, for your definition of ‘current.’”

“What are you, then?”

“Not ‘who’ but ‘what.’ Very astute, Mr. Holmes. I –” a portion of the wall slide open, “oh dear, here comes the retinue.” 

“Cardinal Braxiatel?” a voice sounded from inside.

“Yes, yes, best get to it, but only humanoids for the moment,” Braxiatel barked. “I don’t want to startle our guest just yet.”

“Of course, sir.” A number of uniformed figures – humanoids, heaven help him – poured into the room, relieving Mycroft’s host of his hat, cuff, and portrait tube. Mycroft clutched at his umbrella and glared off the young man who tried to take it from it.

“Quite well, thank you,” Braxiatel was saying to the woman who had led the group into the room. “Timing got a bit tight at the end, but I had the privilege of rescuing Mr. Grote’s image from oblivion. I think we can all sleep well tonight.”

“I’ll have it framed and displayed with the other recent acquisitions?”

“Naturally. And if you could please set out two glasses of the ’23 Pr984x cognac on the terrace for Mr. Holmes and me.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Thank you.” Braxiatel clapped his hands twice and all motion in the room froze. “Artfully done, everyone. Thank you as always for your efforts. I’m sure the Ambassador will be most pleased with our find. Now, if you could all return to your business, I would like to show my guest around in peace.” The staff evaporated with admirable efficiency.

“Cognac,” was the only thing Mycroft could bring himself to say in the restored silence. “I sense you are a considerate host, not one to force your preferences on a guest, but you did not look for my reaction when you asked your lovely assistant for drinks. You went ahead and ordered the cognac in complete confidence. How did you know?”

“As I said in the Portrait Gallery, I am generally my own source of information. I tell myself all manner of things – including the fact that, given enough information, it would not take you long to work out the how.”

Mycroft looked Braxiatel over again – the softness of his hands and sharpness of his hair, the unplaceable cut of his lightly pinstriped suit, the unshakably regal bearing of the king in his own court. Irving Braxiatel, who inexplicably showed up in the nick of time, via a so-called time ring, to mysteriously make off with works of art for his own museum. Who seemed to know events before they happened and people before he met them. Who was scrutinizing Mycroft even as Mycroft looked at him, but not as a puzzle to be solved but a firm hypothesis to be proven.

“My guards in the Portrait Gallery,” Mycroft began. “You told them not to move. You were quite firm in that, I believe. Perhaps their lives are inconsequential to you, but I do not think you would have unnecessarily ordered them to their deaths.”

“And?” Braxiatel nodded.

“I think my men are in fact safe in your hands. ‘Time ring.’ ‘Space-time vortex.’ A marked lack of concern with an impending explosion. Impossible information about both me and our George Grote. An art collection ‘preserved’ from the very jaws of destruction. Repeated references to communicating with your own person to build that collection, that appear to be completely in earnest. I can only conclude that,” Mycroft took a breath and looked at his host in wonder, “you possess the ability to travel in time. You can go back and collect the guards at your leisure and beam them off to safety.”

Braxiatel treated him to a rich laugh and a little golf clap. “Beautifully done, Mr. Holmes. Very neat. Your men, in fact, are already taken care of, as far as the two of us are concerned. They will have suffered only minor head trauma that will leave them will rather fuzzy memories of the hour or so leading up to the blast.”

“Neat indeed.”

“As for the what of myself, I hail from the planet of Gallifrey, where I hold the post of Lord Cardinal among a race known as the Time Lords.” Mr. Lord Cardinal Braxiatel must have noticed the rise of Mycroft’s eyebrows, for he continued, “It is a pretentious title, perhaps, but not a presumptuous one; we were the first people to master time travel.”

“And right now, you want nothing more than to show a humble Earth man around your museum?” Trying to regain a measure of control over this interaction was beyond pointless by now, but Mycroft had to at least push back a bit.

“Yes, about that,” Braxiatel shifted. “For the sake of the integrity of your civilization’s timeline, I must request that you give me your word that you will not use anything you see or learn here to your government’s advantage, no matter how tempting it may seem.”

“Will you insist on holding some lie detector to my skull as I make that promise?”

“Then perhaps a different angle is called for. In gratitude for the lives I have saved and for the things I am to show you, can you walk these galleries not as the effective government of England but as Mycroft Holmes, the private individual looking for cultural enrichment?”

Mycroft raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “You know that they are one and the same.”

Braxiatel sighed. “I did not wish to do this, but if you insist. I hope you will give me the pleasure of your company around the Collection, but as you do so, I have no doubt that you will become increasingly aware of the truly astounding technological superiority that I hold over you. If you attempt to use any of that to gain any advantage on your primitive planet, I will turn that technology against you for both prevention and punishment. I will wipe your efforts from history, then make you wish I had left you to be blown to bits in that museum. Do I make myself completely clear?”

Mycroft felt a thrill of unmoored excitement at being, for the first time in years, so thoroughly outranked and underpowered. “Mr. Braxiatel, I am delighted to see that we understand each other. Do lead on.”

“Excellent,” his host smiled and opened the first set of gold-engraved doors by waving toward a little panel on the wall.

“A final question, that, not knowing your people’s customs, I feel I should ask,” Mycroft paused in the marble archway, giving his umbrella a cheeky twirl. “You have, in the past half-hour, saved my life, whisked me across the cosmos, bullied me into secrecy, and are about to give me a personal tour of your private museum planet. Am I to consider this a date?”

“Mr. Holmes,” Braxiatel said, fixing him with a smirk that should not have been half so familiar, “I’m disappointed. I expected that a man of your intellect would have realized by now: to a Time Lord, all dates are a matter of perspective.”

 

\--------

And then they went on fabulous adventures and bitched about their annoying little brothers and left a trail of decadence and culture in their wake. Whether or not this all ended in slightly kinky interspecies mastermind sex really just depends on your approach to fandom.


End file.
